General Tips
NOTE: Lots of info on this page is not yet updated for patch 0.21 As it's the case with any idle game, Clicker Heroes is perpetuated largely by mathematical formulas that generate new hero levels, stages, etc. as they become necessary. Because these formulas, by necessity, make progression in this game rather predictable, they allow a number of rules to come up, which you can follow to ensure advancing through the game at optimal speed. Buying Heroes and Upgrades Because heroes increase in cost exponentially as they level up, they cease to be cost-effective extremely quickly. As such, the general rules for purchasing heroes and upgrades is as follows: * Only after you have purchased 3-5 more heroes following this progression should you go back and finish buying that hero's upgrades. Exactly when you go back and do this depends on how useful the high-level upgrades of that hero are. Midas has extremely useful upgrades, so he should be upgraded as soon as his next upgrade is affordable. There are also some notable exceptions to this rule. For example: * Brittany, The Masked Samurai, The Great Forest Seer, Natalia, Ma Zhu, and Athena all lack upgrades that benefit higher-level heroes. As such, it is unnecessary to strengthen these heroes past level 10 unless you start preparing to Ascend and when you want them at level 1000, when Frostleaf is no longer worth upgrading. * Grant and Frostleaf are so expensive that it is actually efficient to level the hero prior to them up past level 10 before moving on. Level Shinatobe up to level 25needed and Grant to level 25 before buying Frostleaf. * Heroes which do not have a +100% upgrade as their first upgrade should be leveled up to level 25 before moving on. Remember that the first rule above does only affect the PC versions of the game, both Steam and Web. If you play on mobile versions, either ios or Steam, you should basically level everybody to level 25 and buy both first upgrades, before moving on to the next hero. Using Skills Effectively There is excellent synergy between most of your skills, so you should try to use them grouped together whenever possible. In normal game play: * Always use Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Metal Detector, and Super Clicks together. If possible, use Golden Clicks as well. * Metal Detector doubles Golden Clicks' effect. * Try to use Clickstorm and Powersurge together, while waiting for the longer cooldowns of the above abilities. Powersurge does multiply the overall DPS by 2, and therefore does increase the damage of each click. * If you have unlocked all abilities and want a high DPS combo (excluding Dark Ritual) and you have gotten all non-hero specific upgrades (up through Frostleaf's Frigid Enchant), use your abilities in this order : Energize, Super Clicks, Reload, Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Metal Detector, Golden Clicks (8-7-9-1-2-3-4-5). Once Clickstorm and Powersurge are off cooldown, you can use them both with Super Clicks. * If you're looking for high GPS '''(gold per second) (excluding Dark Ritual) and you have gotten all non-hero specific upgrades (up through Frostleaf's Frigid Enchant), use your abilities in this order : Energize, Golden Clicks, Reload, Metal Detector, Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Super Clicks (8-5-9-4-1-2-3-7). I have done the math, and you get 1/3 more gold if you use Energize on Golden Clicks rather than Metal Detector. * If you run into a Treasure Chest and have some abilities ready, use the '''high GPS combo, but instead, use Energize on Metal Detector rather than Golden Clicks. Only use Energize on Metal Detector if you are able to kill the Treasure Chest while Metal Detector is still active. Otherwise, use the high GPS '''combo normally. If '''maximizing DPS is your goal, then follow these rules: * Use Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Metal Detector, and Super Clicks together (1-2-3-4-7). For maximum effect, use Energize, wait for it to cool down, use Super Clicks, use Energize again, use Lucky Strikes, and then use Clickstorm + Powersurge + Metal Detector (8-wait;7-8-3-1-2-4). ** Unless you cannot click faster than 5 times per second, in which case you should use Energize on Clickstorm instead of Lucky Strikes. Keep in mind that an Energized Reload will reload the last two skills that were used (excluding Energize) instead of removing two hours of countdown on one skill. As such, the following combination is possible once you have 75% cooldown reduction (this combination is primarily used in the endgame, when a player is trying to reach the highest floor possible rather than constantly Ascending) * Use any skills you want except for Dark Ritual, Energize, and Reload * Use Energize * Use Dark Ritual * Use Reload * Wait for 15 minutes without casting any skills * Use Energize on Reload * Wait 15 minutes, using other skills as desired * Rinse and repeat! This strategy permanently ties up Energize and Reload, but allows you to get +10% DPS twice an hour. You will need Vaagur maxed for this combo to work. One simple pattern to follow is: 1-2-3-4-5-7-8-6-9 (wait 15) 8-9-1-2-3-4-5-7 (wait 15) (repeat) When to Ascend A good early game strategy is to rush level 140, level up your heroes to 14,000 cumulative and then ascend, which will earn you anywhere from 8-16 hero souls, depending on primal boss spawns. Once you have the ancients to more easily defeat level 140-145, you will obtain the power spike of level 1000 gilded heroes, so it is advised to continue to about level 160 after this power spike. In any case, the randomly encountered Primal Bosses on higher levels drop large numbers of hero souls, making it worthwhile to progress to as high of a floor as possible before ascending. In the early to mid game (when more than half of your hero souls come from the hero levels and not from primal bosses) it is best when you have about 7 souls from hero levels (seen on the stats tab), since after that it gets much slower to gain more. When in the mid to late game (when you can get to level 500-1000 without clicking by only purchasing heroes) it's best to ascend after between 30 minutes and 1 hour: before the 30 minute mark you are in low levels where Primal bosses yield very little Hero Souls. Beyond 1 hour the monsters don't die instantly anymore, causing you to take longer to get to each new Primal boss for additional hero souls. Choosing Ancients When choosing whether to purchase Ancients, which Ancients to purchase, and how much to spend on them, consider your total Souls earned per hour as a math formula. (Base damage from heroes x Souls in stash x Any Ancients you use to increase damage x Any other Ancients you use to increase damage x Ditto until you run out of damage increasing Ancients) x (Gold earned per kill / seconds per kill x Any Ancients you use to increase gold gained x Any other Ancients you use to increase gold gained x Ditto until you run out of gold increasing Ancients) x (Souls you normally earn per Ascension x any Soul per Ascension increasing Ancients x Any other Soul per Ascension increasing Ancients x Ditto until you run out of Soul per Ascension increasing Ancients) = Souls per hour. In other words, choose a team that works well together (Siyalatas and Libertas work well together for an idle build, but do not work well with the clicker Fragsworth, since using him cancels them), then balance your use of souls between the party members. Here are three different versions of the formula using different Ancients. (100 DPS x 10 Souls = 200 DPS x Siyalatas (100%) = 400 DPS) x (100 Gold per Kill / 10 seconds per kill = 10 GPS x Libertas (100%) = 20 GPS) x 3 hours to get to LVL 200 for 100 Souls x Solomon (50%) = 150 Souls every 3 hours) This final number, Souls per Hour, is the one you're looking at. Damage makes your kills faster and gets you to higher levels, gold makes your damage go up faster, but Souls is the reward of the whole game. So now you're seeing where each small part comes into play. What you saw there used a set of souls in reserve, along with three Ancients, Siyalatas, Libertas, and Solomon, for 100%, 100%, 100%, and 50% increases in four different ways. If I take any number and pretend this number is a representation of my total earning power, say 100, and multiply it by these %'s, I get 100 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 1.5 = 1200. If I'd kept all of those Hero Souls, I'd have gotten 10 Hero Souls + 7 to unlock 3 Ancients + 9 to level Siyalatas +9 to level Libertas + 13 to level Solomon = 48 Souls worth. So only a 480% increase with the same number of hero souls. 100 x 5.8 = 580. If I'd spent them all on Siyalatas, it would have cost me 1 to unlock, and I'd have gotten to level 9 having spent 45 hero souls. Level 9 would be 225%, with 3 souls left over for 30%. So using only a single Ancient would give me 100 x 3.25 x 1.3 = 422.5 Let's try one more example, with Siyalatas using as close to half of my Souls as I can and keeping the other half. Siyalatas at LvL 6 uses 21 Souls to give a 150% bonus. This leaves me 27 souls to keep as a 270% bonus. Now my math would read as 100 x 2.5 x 3.7 = 925. So, you can see where a balance of power that lets every multiplier in the chain be as high as possible is better than a single large multiplier. You can also see where several small multipliers can easily overpower a few large multipliers. So, in many cases, balancing how you spend your souls will depend on how many Ancients you can reasonably afford in your chain (Don't spend over half your stored up souls to get a new Ancient if you can't make that Ancient strong enough to at least double you in some way right off the bat), and then keeping roughly the same level of power in each Ancient, and in your Soul Pool. Many increases of double is worth far more than a single 8x bonuses. Gilded Heroes Gilds are randomly awarded only once per game every 10 levels from 100 up. Gilded heroes have a +50% damage bonus which stacks, and can be increased by purchasing Argaiv, the ancient of enhancement. On game version 0.10 (the one on which the gilds were introduced), it was possible to "choose" the gilded hero through importing an existing save and killing a monster to change the outcome. If this result was undesirable you would import the same save, kill two monsters and gild again, repeating the process until the hero you desired got gilded. Patch 0.11 killed this exploit. As of version 0.12, each gild can be re-rolled to a different hero for a cost of 2 Hero Souls. This menu can be accessed by clicking the "Gilded" button at the bottom of the hero list and then clicking on the hero you wish to de-gild. Re-Gild Strategy To optimize the bonus from gilds, it's much more efficient to stack them on a single hero. Early on you will lose too much DPS doing this to make it worth it, as there is up to a 1/33 chance of re-gilding to the specific hero you want, or on average up to a 66 soul cost. As of patch 0.17, the optimum gilding strategy is as follows: ''' # After being able to consistently reach zone 300+, you may feel that re-gilding is no longer as expensive as you thought it once was. At this point 80 HS re-gilds are still way too expensive, but 2 HS re-gilds are definitely in your price range. A budget solution is to '''move your gilds to Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Samurai and Seer. Using the 2 HS re-gilds, each gild will take an average of 5 moves (10 HS) to move to one of the desired heroes. This will have a very noticeable effect for a near negligible price. If you still feel this is fairly expensive you may wish to move only a percentage of the gilds to the desired heroes per ascension. # Upon being able to consistently hit zone 600-700+, it is time to move your gilds to the fabled Masked Samurai. You should be earning enough souls at this point to feel that 80 HS re-gilds are negligible in price. Using the 80 HS re-gilds, move your gilds to The Masked Samurai (this is the only hero you need to level for DPS in your runs now). If you are finding this re-gilding to be quite expensive, you may wish to move only a percentage of the gilds to the Masked Samurai per ascension. # So, you've made much progress with The Masked Samurai and you're ready to use a stronger hero. It's time to re-gild to the new heroes, the rangers. These are the 9 heroes introduced with patch 0.17, from Dread Knight to Astraea. A key aspect to the rangers is that they gain x5 damage multipliers from level 525 to 725 instead of x4 damage multipliers. This makes them extremely efficient to re-gild to. Due to the significant gap in price between each one, the gilding strategy changes vastly here. Upon being able to instantly kill monsters with The Masked Samurai until he can reach hero level 2525 (2500-3300, varies based on opinion), re-gilding to Atlas becomes a viable option. Obviously until you have Iris leveled appropriately you won't be able to begin the game with Atlas straight away, so you will need to begin by leveling The Masked Samurai until Atlas is affordable. Slowly begin to transition your gilds to Atlas from The Masked Samurai, by taking half of them and placing them onto Atlas. Do a run of the game and see if you can successfully instantly kill monsters with The Masked Samurai all the way to the point of buying Atlas. If you succeed, place half of The Masked Samurai's gilds onto Atlas again, with Atlas possessing 3/4 of your total gilds. Repeat this process until you eventually find the balance of having gilds on Atlas and The Masked Samurai. Keep getting stronger and you will eventually be able to instantly kill with an un-gilded The Masked Samurai up to the point of buying Atlas. If so, congratulations! You have successfully regilded to Atlas. # When you can consistently level Atlas to hero level 1525, it's time to re-gild to Terra, the next ranger. Here, you will do exactly what you did with The Masked Samurai when you re-gilded him to Atlas (read the strategy in point 3). Eventually you will have all your gilds on Terra, and you will get Terra to hero level 1525 consistently. At this point you will re-gild to the next ranger, Phthalo. You will do exactly what you did with re-gilding Atlas to Terra, but with Terra to Phthalo. This process repeats with all the rangers up until the final ranger, Astraea, and this before attacking with Chiron, and the 5 new heroes added in patch 0.24. Formula to know a Hero's DPS according to it's level (for 725 < level < 3999) : ''' Knowing DPS0 : the DPS of the hero at level 725 and Delta : what a hero gains in DPS between level 725 and 726 (for better accuracy, use the gain between level 725 and level 749 and divide by 24) : DPS = (DPS0+Delta*(level-725))*4^(QUOTIENT((level-725);25))*2.5^(QUOTIENT(level;1000) where QUOTIENT(a;b) is the integer portion of the division a/b. '''Cost to level up a Hero from level L1 to Level L2 : Cost(L2) = Ceiling(Cost(L1)*(1.07^(L2-L1))) With these 2 formulas, it is possible to compare the heroes efficiency (DPS/Cost) at any level, and then gild the best one. DPS0, Delta and Costs depend on many things (HS, hero upgrades and other bonuses). To be compared, the heroes have to be in the same context. Using these formulas, we find that the gilding strategy above is the best one. Achievements Click Lag.. One way i found removes this, Click Golden clicks, be on progression mode, put your mouse on the 2 floors below current level, and now you use your auto clicker for 10-15. seconds this should eliminate your click lag as the sprites should load properly now. Relics Rarity of relics don't mean anything (so far), you just get more forge cores. Always pick high tier relics primal boss chance, then pick mid tier relics rubies,hero cost and primal souls Clans Unlocks at level 50 (130 on mobile), costs 50 rubies(500 on mobile) to create a clan, or you can join one for free. You may send a clan a request to join, and if accepted, you can help with click raids for bonus Hero Souls. Maximum amount of people per clan is 10. Rubies Rubies should be used for gilds in early game then quick ascensions or extra attacks on immortals. Category:Guides